And ever stimulating, under its layers and levels and annals and pages that reach out to us, like a good classic novel from a tome in a musty old library.
I have heard many similar comments about history, desultory observations alike. And books. And stuffy, dull names who in actuality were dynamic heroes.
Comments of the unloving are arbitrary to me.
There are many "students" at all levels of education both formal and otherwise, who are not really by definition students, who complain of their lack of interest in studying history.
I definitely put this en par with appreciation of America's game.
Baseball is history. It is America, more than anything else that we possess as a culture.
Too boring?
I suppose maybe, to many.
George Washington, a face on a bill?
Babe Ruth, a candy bar?
Abraham Lincoln, a lanky man with a tall black hat?
Hank Aaron, a man of color who broke the Home Run record of the Babe?
Richard Nixon, a man who professed, "I am not a crook".
Barry Bonds, a steroid using megalomaniac. Literally.
If this is all you can sum up of history, particularly American history and simultaneously its pastime, then maybe you are doomed to miss the absolute sublimity of this sport.
And perhaps sublimity is not a word.
But in this case, it should be if it is not.
They say that Thomas Jefferson and others played this ball and stick game in the 1700s.
Abner Doubleday gets more official credit a century later for being the creator of the game.
And then came the slow march of history. Have you heard of this phenomenon? Causes and effects over time?
Walter Johnson.
Ty Cobb.
Cy Young.
Shoeless Joe Jackson.
The Bambino.
Hank Greenberg.
Josh Gibson.
Ted Williams.
Jackie Robinson.
Joe DiMaggio.
Micky Mantle.
Sandy Koufax.
Bob Gibson.
Roberto Clemente.
Reggie Jackson.
Tom Seaver.
Pete Rose.
Ken Griffey Junior.
Greg Maddox.
Perhaps this list of names means little to you. Or bores you. Perhaps it evokes a little bit of nostalgia or some mythic quality of time like hearing stories of yesteryear from your grandparents.
But perhaps it doesn't really grip you at all. Check yourself.
Perhaps Ernest Hemingway and his novelette "The Old Man and the Sea" is not a real classic too you.
Perhaps names of the Revolutionary War and Andrew Jackson and the Civil War generals and the World Wars and past wars mean little to you.
Perhaps.
Maybe poetry and literature aren't your cup of tea.
Or history.
But if you are a true student of the game, you just might understand.
I am trying to, and will continue these attempts the rest of my life.
And I am enjoying the game.
My team is down 5-0 in the ninth, but it is the march of history, the supernal nature of the spectacle and the humility of the grass roots that make every day a good day in baseball.
162 games per year. And a few more if you can last till the fall.
I hope I can make it again, just like that one cagey veteran who will not put down the glove or the bat.
Have you heard of Jamie Moyer?
Jim Edmonds?
Julio Franco? Omar Vizquel?
If you have not, you are missing out on what the lessons of life, history the United States of America offer us all.
And I know we are blessed, and it has been prophesied.
Baseball is a sport of destiny and glory.
Ask Japan. Or Cuba.
All of us understand the beauty and pageantry, the pathos and the pleasure of history.
Ken Griffey, Jr. 593 6 My personal hope to surpass the Bondster. Gotta love his character. He has been hurt a lot, but could he be as sweet an old hitter as he was a youngster?
Harmon Killebrew 573 9 My Idaho guy. I love big farmer types like this. Anymore, they become linebackers, lineman or hay bailers. Or occasionally a world class wrestler. (That is Rulon Gardner from Wyoming, mighty close to Idaho.) Harmon was a O SM. (Original Stormin' Mormon)
Rafael Palmeiro 569 10 He gets a nod for the difficulty with which Haray Caray had pronouncing his name corectly with the Cubs, and then backwards? See Galarraga.
Jim Thome 507 22 Old school. All heart. Fun to watch.
Eddie Murray 504 23 He was a switch hitter. And mostly DH still awesome.
Lou Gehrig 493 24 Anybody with a disease named after them is cool. Great history related to him and the glorified Yanks. That is pure Americana. Like Mantle, DiMaggio, etc...
Fred McGriff 493 This guy was big and tall and powerful. He looked like a class act.
Vladimir Guerrero 365 65 Love him. Swings at anything and hits a lot of it. Expos forever. More talent in one pinky than Canseco's bicep.
Jeff Kent 365 A member of my church who has a swearting problem. Have to admire his honesty except for his "washing the pick up truck" accident (by his motorcycle). Getting it done later in life, and famously confronted Barry Bonds while simultaneously helping his career numbers.
The ones in bold all played last year and most are still swinging for the fences.
My favorites have to be Ken Griffey, Jr., Dale Murphy, Vlad Guerrero, Andre Dawson and Jeff Kent. Not exactly in that order. And the Big Hurt. and Matt Williams, and Harmon Killebrew. And maybe McGriff and a few others. Jim Thome. Bags. Yaz. Yeah!
Geovany Soto and Joey Votto! Is that right? Do they rhyme?
Don't look now baseball fans (and people who should appreciate the sport more like the ubiquitous and eponymous Lisa H), but it seems that the Italian-American community might be coming on strong in America's pasttime through these two new guys.
Ba da boom!
If Andrew Dice Clay were performing, he would lay down a blue streak for these two fellow Amerigo paisani...
Dice Clay is Italian-American, right? Does the Pope like bratwurst? (I used to say "does the Pope like spaghetti?", but now that we have had two non-Italians in the Vatican in a row it has me rethinking the trite question. No offense to anyone by that. I think it's an attempt at levity.)
But anyway, these two guys appear to be the real deal, at least so far this season.
Geovany Soto has been pounding the ball for the Cubbies, and maybe the answer to the "maldicion del chivo" (that is Spanish for curse of the goat; my Italian is very limited).
He is a catcher, too, I believe, which is always good to see for production. Go Cubs! Kielbasa the curse!
Mr. Votto (I would like to know if it rhymes with Soto, a la songs sung in falsetto sotto voce by Adam Sandler: Opera Man!) made a statement today for the Reds by belting three homers in its runaway win.
Tre hom ronne, bambini!
En un matche! UNO. Que potenza! Que linguini!
Now THAT is Italian.
Well, American, really.
This is a baseball thing.
OK, Lisa? It's a great game. Most football players like it.
'Nuff said.
And speaking of Italian and baseball, who was the best Italian-American ball player of all time?
Joe DiMaggio? Yogi Berra?
Certainly the former had better numbers and romantic hype, while the latter inspired more witticisms and cartoon characters.
But if you think about it, our culture and history would not be the same without these three things, dedicated to Votto three dingers (powatzos) today:
1. Baseball.
2. Italian-Americans. Yeah, I'm talkin' ta you!
3. Italinan-American ball players.
So, forza Votto and Soto!
Now that I think of it, it is more likley that Soto is Latino, but who cares? Then again, maybe both of them are only 1/16 Italian, both of them might be Mexican or Puerto Rican. Does it matter?It's the thought that counts. Celebrate our diversity and fascinating mix of identities in baseball and America.
2008 (Gregorian Calendar): The vaunted Boston Red Sox go for a repeat in the old fall classic, something that was a mere pipe dream a half decade before.
The Sox are a lock! Wicked good!
1908 The Chicago Cubs---Win the world series over the Detroit Tigers. The BoSox won the first WS in 1903---Yes, a half decade before. But the best for the Beantown boys was yet to come: 1912, 1914 (Braves), 1915, 1916 and 1918 would see Boston reign in baseball. Perhaps only the Great War and the Spanish flu spoiled a few peoples' lives...They never lost a series that they played in!
Until the the invention of the Beantown modern 20th century heartbreak, that is. A lot of us remember that. The 1940s. The 1950s. The 1960s. The 1970s. The 1980s! And the 1990s...Good riddance old century! Williams, Yastremski and Boggs...A triumvirate of frustration.
Of course, there were those 1920s and 1930s to think about the rise of the Yanks in the wake of the trade of the Bambino. An error in judgement, perhaps. Curses!
And that depression called 'Great' and the Next Great War didn't help much. Teddy Baseball would have had crazier numbers had he not been chazing zeros across the Pacific...
1808 Boston had been the site of the beginnings of the "revolution" that freed us from the monarchical rule of London. A man of African heritage named Crispus Attacks fell to Red Coat muskets in the snowy streets here in 1775 or so, eventually leading to other sundry events, not far from the church where Paul Revere was indicated how to call the minute men to arms, and not far from Concord and Lexington where the shots were "heard 'round the world". Just ask the French.
GW himself was there, leading the militia men of Mass and other free colonists against the world superpower. General Washington would go on to the American Republic's presidency and currency fame, as well as the general known as Andrew Jacskon, only a half decade after 1808, making sure the British had ultimately lost their former colonies in North America.
And Jefferson and others of their ilk, had recorded on documents still extant that they played a thing called "ball", in courtyards involving running and bases and perhaps a bat of sorts, not the blind kind.
Long before Mr. Doubleday gets the credit for creating the game of baseball. It all goes back to Beantown, in a sense.
1708 This newly colonized city on the harbor, sitting astraddle the river Charles, having been settled by waves of Pilgrims and then Puritans from England, religious faiths feeling their way out of the old Europe. They made this one of few North American metropolitan areas. Along with Philadelphia, a couple of 18th century cities, almost cosmopolitan shall we say! For 1708.
Only Virginia and New Amsterdam could much compare with the western civilization of this land, New England as it was called on this new continent. No Dutch here! And the native tribes were fleeing in droves, apparently. Leave those for Lake Erie, some day. (The Mistake on the Lake? By the Lake? You know, AL fans: The Tribe!)
Of course, this was not a new place for the natives who knew it. Did their games and activities influence how American colonists thought about games and sport?
1608 No white settlers knew Boston Harbor too well, and not many locals did either. There were not a lot of people inhabiting these lands period.
Apparently, a wicked (not Bostonian wicked, mind you) disease had ravaged the American Indians previous to the 1620 landing of the Mayflower. Perhaps it was spread by birds, or other tribespeople who had contracted human viruses from further south where Spaniards and other nasty human development was coming to fruition.
I suspect we will know the exact story someday by DNA tracing and forensic evidence.
In any case, the tribes like Wampanoag and others had been hurt in number due to serious illnesses, even before the first whites had set foot on those patches of soil!
And they still had the heart to help out our Plymouth Rock pilgrims! Ahh, the heart is quenched at Thanksgiving, in remembrance. And this was long before Barry Sanders was a "Cowboy". Ironic, huh?
1508 There may have been more human activity around the Harbor back then. If your angle was angling, maybe this was the place to be. A half decade before, Chris Columbus was wrapping up his New World visits, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was not in the real ####e Islands, known as Indonesia today...
Hudson would make his way up through North America eventually, as well as Cabot. But I don't think that they made it around Cape Cod...Maybe they did.
Funny islands like Nantaskett and "Rhode". Look that one up on Wikipedia...
1408 Dark times. Hard to get that "rebirth" going. What do the French call it? Renacimiento? No, that's Spanish. Oh, well.
Beantown was just a visionary delusion of the bubonic plague. Our ancestors lived every where else, almost: England, Scotland, Sweden, Prussia, Italy, Spain, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Japan, China or Hindustan...
The roots of Boston were being developed between English and other European architects as well as preachers and translators of the Bible like Tyndale and WyCliffe. What was the first mention of baseball in the Holy Bible in King James English, to come two centuries later?
Genesis 1:1. "In the Big Inning".
1308 No hopes of the pastoral game of the diamond back then. Bloody crusades to retake the holy city of Jerusalem?
Now you are talking stealing bases, my Holy Warrior!
Funny that the Holy Cross Crusaders are now located in the place that you already surmised:
Boston!
As well as the Eagles, a vestige of the Roman Catholic tradition.
Which will take us back another ten centuries.
But not today.
That is enough about wicked Beantown and baseball, and our baked bean roots.
Peace.
Clinch rogers out. Dedicated to Grandpa McWilliams, 1896-1980. Boston born and raised. Here's another ring for you, Grandpa.
[disclaimer: Originally, my font will not go bigger as I like to make it! No editing tools!]
Part of the reason that I like to write and blog is to get to know my own thoughts and feelings better, to clarify the way I think and believe, to get to know myself better.
Sound selfish? Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever.
It is good for me overall, of this I am sure.
Sometimes I can spend too much time on here, that is true. But as far as I am able to write out my angsts and issues, this is a healthy thing. And it all isn't sports, for sure.
I, of all bloggers, love to delve into non-sports topics (even though I think that everything eventually relates back to sports anyway. Eg. Mormonism? Steve Young is LDS. Great athlete. Went to BYU--the Mormon school. Didn't serve a mission. Why? Why not? Discuss...) and write about whatever tickles my fancy.
So here is a foray into my current state....Status...Condition. I truly care about social and world events. Wars. Murders. Economics. Elections. Migration. Employment. Population growth. Scientific innovations. Cultural events. International relations. Etc...I get interested in a lot of things. Religion, too, as I am an active member of my faith and I am constantly learning about others...
And I am conerned and alarmed by violence. I am asurvivor, at heart. Ironic that I am in the military now. An assassination and random killings across the globe (Palestine) raise my eyebrow and set me thinking, pondering...And sports is a nicer, perhaps healthier subject to brood on...
Endlessly fascinating. The "real' world. As is my interest in sports.
Now here is the rub: As far as my own constant care about the sports that I follow, I think it has a lot to do with how I formulate my wolrd view. I realized that perhaps this is whay, as a child, I was so taken by the knowledge of American Indians. I wanted a topic, a broad and deep topic, that I could learn well, and perhpas gain a sense of power or control of part of my brain, or my universe, or the greater known world that we all share.
Does that make sense? I think that we all either consciously or sub-consciously crave this. If this reminds anyone of a real theory or hypothosis, let me know. You know where.
1. The BYU football team ended their season on a lucky FG block against UCLA, and now with Hawaii have the longest winning streaks in the nation. Next fall, they have to beat a resurging Washington team plus take the Bruins back in Provo. And schedule another opponent after Nevada backed out, plus Utah State. And the Mountain West thing.
If they can find a good replacement or two for Sete Aulai, their stud center, their offense will be better than 2007. Their defense has more spots to reload, but they should be solid and perhaps even better.
So what am I saying? BYU might push the BCS envelope! And they were the reason for the collusion of the BCS powers due to their 1984 championship. Brigham Young likes to stir things up. Both the man and his namesake school.
2. The ball team of my alma mater on the Wasatch range lost to a feisty Boise State club on the road. Tough environment. With three losses, BYU will drop out of the top 25. No biggie. The Cougars will get 20 wins, enter the Big Dance and there prove if they are worth their salt. The question will be: how many MWC teams make it? Two? Three? Four? New Mexico looks good, as does a couple of others...Maybe San Diego State or Utah, or UNLV...
Oh, yes, two of those three Cougar losses were to UNC and Michigan State, and BYU played tough in both. Unlike Pitt to Dayton yesterday. And the Cougars still have Wake Forest to impress the nation on the schedule amoung the Mountain West...
[There. That is a little longer than my original postings. I forgot to mention more on the BYU football experience on offense, but that is good enough. They may be BCS worthy, that was my point...]
3. The IU football team plays Monday. Trying to get their fourth bowl win out of nine, all time. Hoosiers! Emotional story with Hoeppner having passed away last June. Indiana has talent, but has proven that they can get handled. We'll see.
4. The basketball team is deep and talented, and unproven. The Big 10 might be better than people had thought. Wisconsin and Michigan State are definite powers. We'll see how good IU and the conference are soon enough. Eric Gordon has made IU a real threat. But don't forget about newcomers Ellis and Crawford. Whew! My Hoosiers!
5. I love the NBA. I like looking at the box scores. I like watching the highlights. I love all the stories. Giricek for Korver? Wow. I will watch how they both do...I am an NBA geek. I need to see someone eliminate the Spurs. Nash? KG?
5a. Kind of college b-ball and football nerd, too... I look up where Florida Atlantic is located. Like, how close to the beach! Or if the majority of their players are from Florida or not...Or their bowl history...(Check that case!)
6. NFL. I'm on top of it. Anybody but the Pats. The Pack, the Bolts, or the Colts again. Anybody else would be fine, too. Not Brady.
7. What else? Oh yeah, baseball. Love it. The seeds are germinating, who cares who did chemicals...Should my all time favorite player Tim Raines have a higher batting average becasue he batted against steroid monters like Clemens?
Or did he juice? Who do I mean? Exactly. Love the game.
8. Golf. Not really. Occasionally a story grabs me.
9. Car racing? Nope. Well, ditto as above.
10. Tennis. I like the big tours, starting in Australia soon enough. I like certain players a lot. Great game. Lots of subplots... Go Rodd|ck! The consummate antihero underdog.
11. NHL? Not so much.
12. The Olympics. Yes! Nothing better to bring the wife to the TV for...All sports, even wrestling.
13. UFC. A little bit.
14. Boxing. I used to get pumped for at least one fight per year. Perhaps Pay per view has killed us off?
15. The endless blah blah of convictions and cheating....? Ehhh...It can be way out of context, too often. While OJ probably killed two people, dozens more were dying...By the hands of other non-athletes or former high school athletes, whatever...I like the bigger picture of crime, not crime through the "sports lense". If it brings about knowledge and human advancement, then I suppose it is all right...
And that is all for now. [There. Next day addition]
Clinch rogers out...
PS: Vote Tim Raines for Hall of Fame, and Pete Gammons was convinced that he is worthy...He got on base more than Tony Gwynn...
If you don't see the genius in this masterpiece, I don't know what to say---
But: too bad. This is rad. To the Nth degree. Enjoy.
And when I put the words in hot pink, this is where George inflects his words like a prissy sissy, or at least a "happy camper", bemused at the novelty of the "niceness" of the sport...
AAn
AAnnd by George CAnarlin
"Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's out; sometimes unintentionally, he's out.
Also: in football,basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.
In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you'd ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform,you'd know the reason for this custom.
Now, I've mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.
I enjoy comparing baseball and football:
Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game. Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.
Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.
Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.
In football you wear a helmet. In baseball you wear a cap.
Football is concerned with downs - what down is it? Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?
In football you receive a penalty. In baseball you make an error.
In football the specialist comes in to kick. In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.
Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness. Baseball has the sacrifice.
Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog... In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.
Baseball has the seventh inning stretch. Football has the two minute warning.
Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings. Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.
In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness. In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.
And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:
In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!"
Cue to laugh. And think. And thank the heavens that we are Americans and culturally rich because of these sports...
Don't get me wrong: I love baseball, I love football. I love music and the arts and I love history and knowing about war, death and destruction. We are dualistic beings, no?
Likenesses and differences.
Paging Dave Winfield?
Bo Jackson?
Deion Sanders?
Tim Raines?
The Penguin? (Ron Cey). Do you know the connection?
Journa@! Na@! HI MOM! I wrote this a while ago and didn't have a ton of time to embellish, er, elaborate. That first little thing says "Journay! Nay!" But at the time, two keyboards ago, the "y"wasn't working and for speed I would put the "@"symbol there and sometimes go back and edit it.
Legendary Tim "Rock" Raines was my favorite player from 1981, his rookie season. I was ten years old.
In the fall of 1985, I finally saw him play in person. My mother drove us to Saint Louis from Bloomington, Indiana.
HOW I FIRST SAW MY FAVORITE PLAYER IN PERSON...
As I had stated, Rock had become my favorite baseball player at the end of his rookie year in 1981 when he became visible with his division winning Expos. I thought the Expos had cool uniforms, too, which was important to a 10 year-old. (I also thought the Astros were cool, but I later realized those unis were an aberration). And they had nobody who became my lifetime icon.
I had not pursued playing baseball as much as a lot of people thought I should. It boiled down to a combination of stage fright, lack of dedication and friends who didn't make the cut, and perhaps my childish fantasies of reading books and watching TV and playing with Star Wars figures rather than really devoting myself to a discipline. Sports require a lot of grown up attributes that I shied away from. Play through pain, concentrate when your brain isn't really engaged, stick to something without feeling the immediate results are worth it, conquering self fears and doubts, things along those lines. That can be hard medicine for anybody to take, do you think? I just wasn't in it enough. Perhaps it is simply a part of me.
I had a church member who coached little league encourage me to go out for his team; he coached a lot of members of my church. Most of them were older and bigger than me and they intimidated me. They knew things about baseball of which I was clueless, plus they threw the ball with more confidence and know how. I think I was concerned with my batting a bit, too. Fear of failure and disappointment were real factors, but I always had my own fantasy projects going on, creating stories and books and characters as well, and I would watch the Cubs on TV a lot but sports di not really start to grab me until I was 12-13 years old.
But Raines immediately grabbed me because he was fast as anything and was a switch hitter. My dad taught me to bat left along with my natural batting right, so I felt like if I played, he was me: short, fast, switch hitting Raines. Stealing bases became my number one attraction to the game. Not the homers. And Rock was the master of the NL.
I only watched National League Games because of geography and television. WGN (one of our 9-10 channels, with cable) showed almost all the Cubs games, and almost never showed the White Sox. Plus Wrigley Field did not have lights and most of the games were showed in the day when I was around in the summer. The same kind of thing happened to my step-nephew in Bedford, Indiana, with the Sosa phenomenon in recent years.
WTBS showed the Braves pretty well, and the local channnel four affiliate (Indianapolis/Bloomington) broadcast the Reds a bit. All NL, all the time. The AL was the "other", and I usually rooted against them.
So by 1982 I was catching Timmy on the tube when he played Chicago, Atlanta, and sometimes the Reds. If I saw him three or four times in a week it was special. This exposure to the team solifified my like for him. He was who I wasn't: fast and fearless. Maybe that first year I didn't pay particular attention but he continued his excellence. Little did I know he was fighting his own demons with cocaine. I learned that later, but it never diminished my admiration for him.
During the winter of my 6th grade year (1982-83) things were good personally but then my family started to unravel when my parents decided to break up. The following summer was hard because my mom stayed at an apartment away from home, and in retrospect it wasn't very far from my house but she might as well have been in another country. Like Raines in Montreal. I had a hard time dealing with things, mostly trying to pretend that things were either the same or trying harder to not deal with it at all. Trying to forget, deny, shutdown, turn off...Or pretend it would get better, and hope it could, and believe that it was a serious mistake that would be corrected.
I did jobs during the summer; by then I had stopped taking swimming lessons across the street at the local public pool. I mowed lawns and earned decent money to buy comic books and save; mostly save. Some times some desperate parents from my church ward would come by and have me babysit their kids for the night. I considered the money chump change in comparison to lawn mowing money, but it was still money.
I was an active Boy Scout and was loyal but not terribly "into" it; I was mostly in it because my church expected all good priesthood holders and righteous young men to be involved; I considered myself among that group. Camping in southern Indiana during the summer was tortuous. Winter camps were no picnic, either. It always rained! At least it did too much.
So that summer of 1983 I was looking for distractions, something a little more real than "Return of the Jedi" or Indiana Jones, and I think I latched on to something all baseball fanatics really comprehend: the Newspaper. Particularly: Box scores. Have you read "The Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway? If you don't understand what I am referring to, read it agian. You cannot err with the masters of literature. But I digress.
So with the absence of a daily injection of a televised schedule, Sportscenter, or the modern Internet, I live to check the hitting lines, and stats became a byproduct of my love. If you hit one for four one day, and 2 for four on the next, you are batting a nifty.375, and THAT two day result is much more impressive in May or June than in August or September. These are good thing for a twelve year-old to learn. Unfortunately, once hooked you may never decide to give up that facination. Unless he retires. But of course, he may have a son..._
My parents did get back together by the fall of 1983 ever so briefly, but it was over again for good by the winter of 1984-1985. By 1985 I had perfected the Tim Raines calendar: I would painstakenly copy all 162 games onto 3 or 4 regugular line pieces of paper, and then day by day track Raines' stats and the the Expos' win/loss record and scores. By the end of the summer I would have a good piece of work made, which represented a lot of hope and perseverance. I grew to really loathe the Mets in that time because this was Montreal's main competition. Gooden was the rage and they had hitters, too, always more feted and recognized than those guys up north.
And now it had been a sizable time since Montreal had played in the pennant championship of 1981. My voice had dropped a few octaves, and I was finished with middle school and looked forward to the big time: High School. And then my mother, only a month removed form her official (legal) divorce from my father, suggested the best idea imaginable:
"Let's watch Tim Raines play."
We could do that? Yeah, that is why they play the game, right? A spectator sport? Of course!
And the Expos still had an outside shot at the race, they were a mere 5 or 6 games out in September! (Late September, but what did I know?) Raines is unconquerable!
How far is St. Louis? I had never been there. 9 (We had driven by on our way to Texas when I was 11). Only 4 or 5 hours? That is like Chicago, only less Indiana time...
Stay the night? Catch a weekend Saturday evening game?
Or was it day? Did we stay over Friday? I cannot recall exactly, but I'll tell you what I do remember...
It was day light, maybe it was a 1:00 day game, it had to be Saturday. We parked somewhere close and walked into a big Busch Stadium. We were high up and far away but I could see perfectly.
This was my first Major League game since once as a wee child, watching the Red Machine of Cinncinnati versus the Pirates sometime in the 70s. They had Pete Rose, George Foster, and afew other great players. But none of those guys held a candle to Tim Raines.
Raines was surrounded by great talent: Andre Dawson, Tim Wallach, Hubie Brooks, Andres Galarraga. But he was The Man.
That day, he did everything. He hit, he stole, he scored. It was everything I had dreamed of him doing. Dawson hit a grandslam and the Expos (a handful of games behind the Cardinals) were winning 6-2 and then the Cards rallied. They were a great team that year. Jack Clark, Tommy Herr, Ozzie Smith, Terry Pendleton, Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, Andy Van Slyke, Pedro Guerrero, who was their catcher?
Regardless, they went to the World Series that year.
And in that game, Clark hit a game winning blast to win in the bottom of the ninth...
But Raines did his part, as did his teammates...
So my Mom stood up and became my hero, enabling me to break through and realize I can go to see my favorite player in person! And I did!
I like (am obsessed with) the big US sports of football, basketball and baseball. And I love how they expand globally. I am fascinated by World Cup soccer, Olympics and certain tennis matches.
Oh, yeah, and I will talk your ear off when it comes to religion, politics, right, wrong, demography, history and truth.
Blog on and blog it.
Uh, also I have a Foxsports blog called papaclinch'si t and that was the original, and this was created as a mistake and then a parallel world for more spiritual topics on occasion. More BYU here, more IU over there...
Make sense? I love both schools with an odd type of crazed loyalty... Hard to explain. Thus the blogging.
Keeps me out of trouble, maybe?
